One F Leaves Girl Nothing to Cheer About

Melissa Fontes, a 16-year-old cheerleader at Woodbridge High School, has been told she can’t audition for next year’s squad because she failed a chemistry class.

But if the same thing had happened to a student involved in any other extracurricular activity, different rules would apply. For at Woodbridge and the other two high schools in the Irvine Unified School District, pep squad members are held to a higher academic standard.

With next year’s cheerleader tryouts scheduled for today, Melissa planned to challenge this rule at Tuesday night’s school board meeting. But at the last minute, district officials offered to postpone the tryouts until Melissa and her mother could discuss the complaint privately with school board members.

Despite this concession, Melissa is far from happy about the situation.

“I just don’t understand how they can figure it’s a fair rule,” said Melissa, who has been a cheerleader for two years.

School Principal Greg Cops says the stricter rules are justified for pep squad members because “they’re out in front of 3,000 people at a football game with a microphone in their hand. They command respect.”

The district’s policy states that all athletes must maintain at least a 2.0, or C, grade-point average each semester, district Supt. David Brown said. An F will not disqualify an athlete as long as his or her overall average is at least 2.0, he said.

But at University and Woodridge high schools, pepsters, as members of the pep squad are commonly known, must maintain a grade-point average of at least 2.5, while the standard is 2.0 at Irvine High School. And pepsters at Woodridge must also provide five letters of recommendation.

Additionally, each high school is free to adopt a “no Fs” rule, as Woodbridge has for the school’s pepsters, including cheerleaders, school mascots and the drill team, Cops said.

“It’s been our policy for 10 years here, and we’ve reviewed it several times,” Cops said. “But we believe the F grade is a responsibility indicator. Normally, for students at the high school level who seek extra help and go the extra mile, Fs are not awarded. F represents an issue of not following through.”

According to Melissa’s mother, Patricia Passy, Melissa has a 2.9 grade-point average--almost a B average--with the F in chemistry factored in.